Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 at First Glance

I've been playing Call of Duty Black Ops 2 for about a week now, and I am impressed with most aspects of this game. It is mainly set in 2025, narrated by an aged Frank Woods, but some of the game is played in the Alex Mason and Frank Woods days. You play as multiple characters throughout the campaign. For a long time, shooting games have claimed to have a campaign where your decisions determine your outcome, but none have actually been true. Until now. Black Ops 2 has a campaign with multiple endings, and your decisions on the battlefield determine your result. Black Ops weapons, such as the AK47 and the FNFAL (which is fully automatic in Black Ops 2, by the way) are used in the older missions, while real and high-tech new weapons, such as the MTAR and the LSAT, are used in the 2025 missions. You will also face off against robots and unmanned armies in the futuristic missions, and they can be very difficult to destroy. You can even customize your loadout before each campaign mission. The object of the campaign is capturing and/or killing Raul Menendez, and it takes many steps, from the past and the future, to make it happen. It's one of those storylines where it shows the bad guy's point of view (in this case, Menendez) and you see his reasoning for his actions, and you feel bad for him, even if it's the tiniest bit. There are several Strike Force missions that are optional to play through the duration of campaign mode. During these Strike Force missions, you are a squad of robots, sentry guns and humans. Sometimes there won't be robots, and sometimes there won't be any humans, it just varies. In a Strike Force mission, you can literally control anybody on the battlefield by pressing select and going into Tactical View - basically just a view of the whole map from the sky - and moving your cursor over one of your squad members (human or non-human) and pressing select again, and you are instantly in that soldier's shoes. You can also command your squad members to move to certain points and attack certain enemies in Strike Force. All Strike Force missions are set in 2025. Throughout the campaign, you may notice some aspects that came from the original Black Ops, like the flashing red numbers that sometimes appear in your player's eyes, or the flashback Woods has from his fight with Kravchenko in the first Black Ops. At one point in the campaign, you even walk through the room with the Interrogation Chair and the tiny TV, where Alex Mason was held in Black Ops. It's a great story and an epic campaign.

Frank Woods shares his wisdom with David Mason throughout the campaign.

The bad guy, Raul Menendez.

Clean, crisp, lifelike graphics.

Multiplayer is the same, with huge changes to add futuristic elements to your gameplay, and it is amazing. They put loads of game modes into multiplayer, with new game modes like Multi-Team, old Black Ops Wager Match modes - modes such as Gun Game, One in the Chamber, and Sticks and Stones - and even modes originally made by Infinity Ward for Modern Warfare games such as Kill Confirmed and Headquarters. Plus Combat Training for Noobs and Newbies, and League Play. All these playlists put Black Ops 2's multiplayer in a class by itself when it comes to ways to play. Medals like Backstabber, Avenger and First Blood are back, and there are some new medals, too. The Tomahawk has been replaced with a Combat Axe, which is the same thing only your throwing an axe instead of a Tomahawk. Instead of C4 and Claymores being labeled as Equipment as they were in Black Ops, they're now choosable to replace your lethal grenade, which can be a Frag, Semtex, Combat Axe and more. The Create a Class system has been re engineered with a new Pick 10 system. With Pick 10, the sky is the limit. You can add objects to your loadout, such as extra lethal or tactical grenades, extra attachments or extra perks. Each item in your loadout counts as one item, each perk, grenade and weapon. You can put up to ten items in each of your classes. Wanna get rid of your tactical grenades, then load three attachments onto your primary weapon to make the ultimate supergun? Go for it. Wanna cut some corners so you can make your soldier superior by giving him six perks? Why not? Wanna lose your attachments and give yourself four grenades? Go ahead. Do what you want. The Pick 10 system will not limit your innovation.

I haven't played all the maps, but I like what I've seen so far. Let's start off by talking about Nuketown 2025. The map Nuketown was a tiny map originally on Call of Duty: Black Ops, a nuclear testing facility that looked like a mini community. It instantly became everyone's favorite map, perfect for quickscoping and close-quarters combat. Now it's back, but different. It's Nuketown, but in 2025. The layout of where everything is has not changed, but every small detail has. It looks like a robot town with so much technology. Phones in every room, high-tech televisions in most. Where in Nuketown there was a Jeep Wrangler on one side of the map, there is now a car that runs on water in Nuketown 2025. The only problem with this map is it is HARD, and players online are GOOD. My kills to deaths ratio at this map once was 14 to 49. But it's a cool addition to a great game and a great set of maps, which include Express, a large railroad station, and Yemen, a great sniper map where close-quarters combat is also an option. Quickscoping is pretty good, with most sniper rifles, though some require you to dragscope. Though minimal, weapons are great, with an assortment of assault rifles, submachine guns, light machine guns, shotguns and sniper rifles. Secondary weapons include the Crossbow, Ballistic Knife, launchers like the RPG and handguns like the Executioner. Some of the handguns are even fully automatic. Once again, Activision and Treyarch have mastered another beautiful Call of Duty multiplayer experience.

The zombies have blue eyes now.

Call of Duty players have been obsessed with the idea of Zombies being at the ever-so-famous multiplayer map Nuketown. Now, Treyarch has made that dream a reality.

Zombies. They have been part of the Call of Duty franchise since the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Veterans Day, 2008, the day Call of Duty: World at War was released. It was released with a new game mode called Nazi Zombies (since COD World at War was set in World War 2). In Nazi Zombies, you could either go solo or grab a friend and fight off endless waves of undead Nazi Zombies. Your goal is to stay alive for as many rounds as possible by shooting or stabbing the zombies and gaining points, which you could then use to buy weapons off the wall or unlock new areas. There was only one map when COD WaW was released, Nacht Der Untoten, a small, run down facility with barriers through which the zombies entered and an upper floor that had to be bought using points. It was the most simple zombie map ever made, but it still was the map that defied a Treyarch tradition and a zombie epidemic. Pretty soon, zombies was quite popular, so Call of Duty released a map pack DLC that included a new zombie map, Verruckt, and later more map packs adding the zombies maps Shi No Numa and Der Reise. When these new maps came out, they added all sorts of things like a mystery box, which costed 950 points and would produce a random weapon for your use. They added Perk-a-Colas, which were drinks you could buy that gave enhanced your player. Juggernog made your player tougher, Speed Cola provided a supersonic reload speed, Double Tap gave any weapon rapid fire, and other things like this. They even added a Pack-a-Punch machine, which costed 5000 points and upgraded your weapon tremendously. Call of Duty just struck a match to the zombies that all us fans love.

Verruckt

Shi No Numa

After a success in Call of Duty: World at War, Call of Duty got with Infinity Ward and made another successful shooter, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, the sequel to the original Modern Warfare, which was released before World at War. After MW2, Call of Duty was back with Treyarch, and they had big plans. They dropped a bombshell, releasing Call of Duty: Black Ops. CoD had completely revolutionized their campaign, creating a new storyline. They changed up their multiplayer by giving it epic gameplay, even though they downgraded their graphics slightly from MW2. But the biggest revolution of all was not in multiplayer or campaign, but in Nazi Zombies. They were just calling it zombies now, though the zombies are still Nazis. Zombies is now as much of a part of Treyarch Call of Duty as it's multiplayer, and people love it. Black Ops was released with three maps, Kino Der Toten, FIVE, which is a map of the pentagon where you play as John F. Kennedy and more, and Dead Ops arcade, a third person game where you have a view from the sky and walk around shooting zombies. Kino Der Toten was a Nazi facility, and it is probably the most played zombie map, and arguably the best. FIVE was unlockable by completing the campaign or inputing a code. No one was too fond of Dead Ops arcade, and they didn't bring it back in Black Ops 2. There was then map packs released with more zombie maps, Ascension, Call of the Dead, Shangri La, Moon, and the four original zombie maps from COD World at War. Treyarch really outdid itself when it comes to zombies with Black Ops. Black Ops 2 is going to have to have AMAZING zombies to beat the original Black Ops.

Kino Der Toten

Moon

So Black Ops 2 is here, with a lot of expectations for their zombies. Expectations that would be headed right down the drain. When Black Ops 2 was released, makers of the game claimed it would include a zombie campaign. Well, what they consider to be a campaign and what we consider to be a campaign are a LOT different. To Activision and Treyarch, zombies looks to have a campaign. But to us, the players, it just looks like three maps in an area called "Green Run". The maps were simply called Bus Stop, Town, and Farm. I don't know where someone, anyone would get off calling that a "campaign", but whatever. They did add some cool new additions, such as zombies game modes, which I find awesome. The modes are survival, which is basically just the original zombies where you try to stay alive, TranZit, a mode where you ride around on a bus through all different areas of Green Run, trying to survive while exploring and uncovering the secrets of the zombie world, and Grief, a mode of zombies where you can actually play against other players by trying to hold out the longest against the zombies. They also now go by a level system, with levels one through five, where you can actually level up as you do on multiplayer, but it is only five levels, so it's quite simple. What would be cool is more levels, say, fifteen or so, and have actual prestige levels so you can prestige in zombies! Another boss addition they did add to Black Ops 2 is custom zombies, where you can customize your zombie expierence in the pregame lobby. You can choose to turn those stupid undead dogs off, choose to play on Easy level rather than the Normal, traditional difficulty, choose a starting round and even turn on headshots only for an extreme zombies challenge! I can't really comment on the Nuketown Zombies, since I do not have it and have never played it, but it looks pretty amazing! But believe it or not, as much as I LOVE all the zombie modes and customizable games, I must say I find Call of Duty: Black Ops the stronger zombie game. First off, Black Ops had zombie maps that were WAAAAAYYY more creative than Black Ops 2, not that this can't be fixed, because it's almost certain there will be some sort of DLC that adds maps besides Green Run. Maybe Treyarch will actually get creative, and Green Run was just a beginner's expierence. But the Black Ops 2 Green Run maps on survival and just... irritating! Maybe I don't want to play TranZit every time I want to play zombies, ever think of that?!? No Tank Dempsey or any other zombie fighters, just these two nerdy-looking CIA dudes with the personalities of plastic cups. Again, this could be fixed with updates of Downloadable Content. But it's just annoying how disappointing zombies were. This was supposed to be the best zombie game ever created, but I find much to be desired. If they added all the original World at War zombie maps like Verruckt and Der Reise AND all the Black Ops zombie maps like Kino Der Toten and Call of the Dead, this game could probably come close to the original Black Ops zombies. Just add a set or two of downloadable content and your zombies may have the past zombie entries beaten out. No Nickolai on a Call of Duty game?!?! Come on now, that just sucks. Isn't he supposed to be in every Call of Duty game??? This is literally SCREAMING DLC! Make a zombie DLC with some of the actual zombie fighters in it, including Nickolai. But looking at the big picture, overall, zombies is mediocre, but with a little work, it could easily become great.

The Verdict? It's a great game, epic campaign and stunning multiplayer graphics, gameplay and environments. Weapons are great, playlists are great, and it's just straight up fun. Zombies is so-so, with much to be desired. Treyarch suceeded in creating a game that revolutionizes First Person Shooters forever. I rate it an 8.2 out of 10, due to the lacking zombie expierence. Add some decent DLC and this game is an easy 9.8. Amazing. Excuse me, have to go play now.